A new day for Romanian cimbalom master in Chicago

Nicolae Feraru talks about a lifetime of playing a unique instrument known as the cimbalom. The Chicago-based Feraru, who fled Romania over 25 years ago, recently received America's highest folk-arts award: the NEA National Heritage Fellowship.

Nicolae Feraru talks about a lifetime of playing a unique instrument known as the cimbalom. The Chicago-based Feraru, who fled Romania over 25 years ago, recently received America's highest folk-arts award: the NEA National Heritage Fellowship.

Nicolae Feraru prepares for his biggest Chicago show since winning America's highest award for folk arts.

For the Romanian cimbalom virtuoso Nicolae Feraru, who has lived in Chicago since 1993, life changed last September.

That's when he traveled to Washington, D.C., to receive his adopted country's highest honor for folk arts, the National Endowment for the Arts' National Heritage Fellowship.

Sure, Feraru was delighted to receive the award check for $25,000. As he told me last year, "It's a lot of money – I never got $25,000 in my life." But looking back on it, Feraru realizes anew how much the honor and the ceremony last Sept. 25 meant to him.

"I had very few days in my life like this," recalls Feraru, who will play his biggest Chicago concert since receiving the award Sunday afternoon in Millennium Park, during World Music Festival Chicago.

"Congressmen, many people were there. I gave a speech. I say, 'Everything is OK. Thank you so much (to) the American government, the American people, because they know what it is to respect what is our tradition.'"

Then came a letter from Pres. Barack Obama congratulating Feraru on his achievement and pointing out that "folk and traditional art have the power to open our minds and enrich our lives, bringing us together and reminding us of the humanity we share."

"I tell you, I never believed the president will send me the letter," says Feraru. "I was very excited about the letter. I was very proud what happened over there. And I saw they not make the difference between color or race or religion, which is for me fantastic."

Phil Velasquez, Chicago Tribune

Nicolae Feraru at age 18, the day of his first professional performance.

Nicolae Feraru at age 18, the day of his first professional performance. (Phil Velasquez, Chicago Tribune)

Feraru happens to be an authority on the subject of discrimination, having suffered greatly for being a Gypsy playing the indelible music of his culture in his homeland. As a third-generation family member to master the cimbalom, a kind of a hammer dulcimer played with "sticks" or mallets, Feraru endured Communist censors who banished Gypsy repertoire from concerts and recordings.

Often, he heard the cimbalom referred to as "a garbage instrument." Once after taping a show in Romania, Feraru turned on the TV to find that his music was indeed heard nationwide, but he was nowhere to be seen: The edited program showed a non-Gypsy musician playing cimbalom during his solos.

Dismayed, Feraru called the station boss, who told him, "The manager came and say, 'Take out this man because he's too black,'" Feraru recalled last year.

"I said, 'What does this mean?' I play music for kings, for the people, and we pay taxes. … For big stuff, I was not too black. For TV, I was too black."

So Feraru applied for political asylum while playing on tour in Detroit in February 1989, moved to Chicago four years later and waited for most of his family to join him here later. He survived by working days in a dental supplies factory and playing low-paying gigs at night.

For all of Feraru's travails, however, his reputation as master of the cimbalom only spread, culminating with the NEA Fellowship, the citation honoring him for having "perpetuated the Gypsy traditional music he learned from his father."

So how exactly has Feraru's life changed since he saluted by the United States and its chief executive?

"After this, we started (getting) more and more jobs," says Feraru, who lost his factory job in 2008 and now considers himself retired from any kind of work but music.

"I feel like a very important person. I feel like, my God, too bad in my country they didn't appreciate this.

"After I received the award, everybody – even Romanians here, they see me with different eyes. … Now, after this, when I go somewhere (to play) for the wedding or for the party or for the concert, everybody wants to make the picture with me. And everybody says now to me: maestro."

Not that Feraru, 64, is anywhere near Easy Street. Though his photo adorned train stations in Washington at the time of the award ceremony and though his performance schedule has picked up since, he yearns for more appearances. He's often invited to appear across the country, but to be paid with just proceeds from the door – not enough to cover his travel expenses. He can only rehearse with his band at night, because the musicians who play for him support themselves with day jobs, just as he did for decades.

Moreover, he knows that notwithstanding his big award, "some people don't have any idea about me."

And he wonders if his beloved cimbalom music will still ring out after he's gone.

"I don't know if my son will continue with the instrument," says Feraru. "Now the music changes, and the people do not understand what this instrument means."

Nevertheless, Feraru hopes that Sunday's show at Millennium Park, where he'll play a 75-minute set leading one of his largest ensembles, an octet, will represent another turning point for him. Ultimately, he dreams of expanding his stage presentation to feature two pairs of Gypsy dancers, enriching the work of his band.

No matter what happens, though, his love for the cimbalom seems undiminished from when his father started giving him lessons at age 6, and the young Nicolae ate bread at the instrument, so he wouldn't have to break away to take meals.

"The music, this is my life," says Feraru. "Even now, if I play on the instrument and my wife invites me to eat, I say: 'No, not now, I ate before.'

"When I start on the instrument, I forget everything what is bad in the world. ... The instrument is like for me my food.

"I tell you the truth," continues Feraru. "When I play, I forget everything, if I am sick or I am hungry or I have problems with other things.

"And when I die, I will die with this instrument in my dreams. This was my life."

And we are the fortunate to hear what Feraru has made of it.

Nicolae Feraru & His Gypsy Band appear on a double-bill with Calypso Rose with Kobo Town at 3 p.m. Sunday at the Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park, near Randolph Street and Michigan Avenue, as part of World Music Festival Chicago. He'll also play at 5:15 p.m. Sept. 21 in the Chicago Cultural Center's Preston Bradley Hall, 78 E. Washington St. The festival runs Thursday through Sept. 21; for details, visit worldmusicfestivalchicago.org.

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